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"In fact, the only real purpose the guidance served was as a justification to suppress Americans’ free speech"
Says everything about that article.
Self explained but not scientifically backed. Unless you can prove otherwise to the NIH legal council who testified under oath?
Criticising fact checkers is one thing and can get me partially on board, but any article sprinkling in such conspiracies automatically disqualifies itself to me as it is just clearly a propaganda machine with its own political agenda.
It’s two issues.
Fact checkers are needed because of misinformation, “official sources” are spreading their own misinformation.
That whole selective quoting out of context thing is a good example of misinformation though.
The 6ft (really the 2 meter) rule didn't come from nowhere and does have research backing -- a lot of it going back to the late 1800's. Here's a great overview of the research and history surrounding it: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8504878/
Were it gets interesting is that this model of disease transmission doesn't fit covid (and might not fit anything really) but the take-away is the opposite -- that it's actually worse and that 6ft isn't enough. It would be easier to take the criticism leveled from the anti-social distancing crowd seriously if they were arguing for more distance and isolation, not less because that's just fixing wrong with different wrong.
It was very good advice.
It has been known to be good advice for decades, recent decades.
The fact that this had not been specificly reproven specifically with SARS-CoV-2 during the earliest days of a global outbreak isn't relevant to the value of that advice.
Sturgis, and numerous other outbreaks arising from events in the shit show that exampled the US approach to social distancing highlighted what happened as a result of not heeding such advice ... some of the highest per capita death rates in the world.
lol
> just a US ultra conservative rag
Ultra conservative huh? Good one. Tell me to go check NPR or BBC or your favorite state media next won’t you?
The point here is that keeping distance from others is a sound strategy to slow the spread of respiratory infections.
The Federalist article is being delibrately obtuse and weasel framing an obviously politically motived line of questioning in a US committee.
It's the kind of thing intuitively obvious to the meanest intellect, regardless of leaning.
Dipshits in the US putting politics above public safety is par for the course.
What's preventing you from seeing that?